"Masterless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for a man to own himself and call none other lord! No man ever more shall hold me slave to him. Henceforth we be rovers, this star of my life and I. Come thou with us, friend! If thou stay here, thou'lt be held no better than erro, a landless, masterless wanderer, who is fair game for the law and for all men. Had my lord stayed, thou knowest that I too should have remained faithful. He being gone, we must fend for ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... hat cocked over his eye, attracted rather more attention than I cared to see, considering the importance of the missives which he bore, and the certainty of their discovery should he be arrested as a masterless man. Fortunately, however, the curiosity of the country folk did but lead them to cluster round their doors and windows, staring open-eyed, while he, pleased at the attention which he excited, strode along with his head in the air and a cudgel of mine twirling in his hand. He had left golden opinions ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the fall of the First Babylonian Dynasty, however, Western Asia had not been left masterless. Three other imperial powers had waxed and waned in her borders, of which one was destined to a second expansion later on. The earliest of these to appear on the scene established an imperial dominion of a kind which we shall not observe again till Asia falls to the Greeks; for it ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth
... mind, Alvarado, whose white, haggard face showed that he had passed a sleepless night, rode at the head of the column. Some distance in front of him rode a trooper, for there were even then thieves, wandering bands of masterless men who levied bloody toll on travelers from the capitol whenever they got opportunity. Next to the captain came the sergeant of the little guard, then the two women, followed closely by two more of the soldiers, after that the little pack ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... hide-tents, "Moyas" named, that on the mead Sheltered dark-eyed women wearing Braided hair and woven bead. Never man had seen their lodges, Never warrior crossed the slopes Where they rode, and where they hunted Imu bulls and antelopes. Masterless, how swift their riding! While the wild steeds onward flew, From round breasts and arms unburdened Freedom's winds their tresses blew. Only when the purple shadows Slowly veiled the darkening plain Would they sorrow that the Sun-god ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... the expropriation of the PEOPLE from the land, the extinction of the yeoman, and the rise of the capitalist farmer; and the growth of the town population, which, swelled by the drift of the landless vagabonds and masterless men, grew into a definite proletariat or class of free-workmen; and their existence made that of the embryo capitalist-manufacturer also possible; and the reign of commercial contract and cash payment began to take the place of the old feudal hierarchy, with its many-linked chain of personal responsibilities. ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... certain shame. Not a sound except the sough of pines from the neighboring forest was heard. Though the sun was sinking in clear blue, the aspect of the wilderness, gray and white and severe, touched the impressionable men with deeper melancholy. They felt lonely, masterless, mean. ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... Ballads of Sacred Origin contains all that we possess in England—notice that only two have Scottish variants, even fragmentary—and somewhat more than can be classified as ballads with strictness. Yet I would fain have added other of our 'masterless' carols, which to-day seem to survive chiefly in the West of England. One of their best lovers, Mr. Quiller-Couch, has complained that, after promising himself to include a representative selection of carols in his anthology, he was chagrined to discover that they lost their quaint delicacy when ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... enough to leave his top-coat behind him, was he not?" the coroner asked. "Did you not find this coat after he was gone?" and he pointed to a poor masterless garment, that looked greener and more outworn than ever as it hung over the back of ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... body's maidenhood Alone were neither rare nor good Unless with it I gave to you A spirit still untrammeled, too, Take my dreams and take my mind That were masterless as wind; And "Master!" I shall say to you Since ...
— Love Songs • Sara Teasdale
... sounding far away, Hid in a myall grove.' He raised his head, The bush glowed scarlet in descending day, A masterless wild country—and he said, My father ('Toll.') 'Full oft by her to stray, As if a spirit called, have I been led; Oft seems she as an echo in my soul ('Toll.') from my ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... as this corresponded to facts, the system could work satisfactorily. With the spread of commerce, and the growth of a less settled population, difficulties necessarily arose. The pauper and the vagabond represent a kind of social extravasation; the 'masterless man' who has strayed from his legitimate place or has become a superfluity in his own circle. The vagabond could be flogged, sent to prison, or if necessary hanged, but it was more difficult to settle what to do with a man who was not a criminal, but simply a product in excess of demand. All manner ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... the warrior dieth, His comrades in the war, With arms reversed and muffled drum, Follow his funeral car; They show the banners taken, They tell his battles won, And after him lead his masterless steed, ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... waving a cocked hat. Then there came the day when Tim made his first acquaintance with field training, and beheld a loose and disorderly scramble which men called an advance. To him it seemed just a mob of masterless men, crawling and crouching on the grass, firing as they passed, and bowing cringingly before death. It was a sight he could hardly endure—an exhibition offensive to any soldier whose forbears had learnt to achieve the impossible as a matter of routine and had held firm ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... cannot take you among the Spanish guerillas without showing you what kind of men they were, and the sort of warfare that they waged. I will only say that I understood why Monsieur Vidal's horse was waiting masterless in the grove, and that I hoped he had met this terrible fate with sprightliness and courage, as a ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Midsummer, any grig, ling, heath and furze, goss or fern, is punishable with whipping and confinement in the house of correction'; yet, in this forest, about March or April, according to the dryness of the season, such vast heath-fires are lighted up, that they often get to a masterless head, and, catching the hedges, have sometimes been communicated to the underwoods, woods, and coppices, where great damage has ensued. The plea for these burnings is, that, when the old coat of heath, etc., is consumed, young will sprout ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... in grimy overclothes scrambling terror-frenzied from beneath the Rosemary. The thing done had been overdone. The fireman had "bled" the air-brake too freely, and the liberated car, gathering momentum with every wheel-turn, surged around the circling spur track and shot out masterless on the steeper gradient of ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... had been wounded by the rifle fire, but in most cases the wounds were slight. Six were dead and they were taken to the boats, where stones were tied to them and they were dropped into the Mississippi to disappear forever. Rovers, adventurers, masterless men, they had been, but they died in a good cause, and they were not without mourners, as their bodies ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... 'tis true our wars be ended I thank God, and we may sheathe our swords at last, but the woods be full of Black Ivo's scattered soldiery, with outlaws and other masterless men." ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... hounds may a' rin masterless, My hawks may fly frae tree to tree, My lord may grip my vassal lands, For there again maun ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild." It has let loose the wandering, masterless, dangerous virtues, and has insisted that not one or another of them shall run wild, but all of them together. The ideal of wholeness which Matthew Arnold so eloquently advocated, is not a dead mass ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... the gods are predestined to suffering and death. Let one sacrifice end the curse. Let the Ring be purified by fire, the waters dissolve it forever. The end of the gods is at hand. But though I leave the world masterless, I give it this precious treasure. In joy or in suffering, happiness can alone come from love." She seizes a burning brand, and invoking Loge, god of fire, flings it into the pyre. Her horse is brought to her, and she proudly ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... at table on the side of the track, the village dogs steal into the moonlight and come gradually nearer us; masterless dogs of any colour betwixt the collie and fox-terrier. No one feeds them or owns them, so there's plenty of appetite and unclaimed affection going. One old lady takes her position beside us for the night, and its poor bony sides are filled for once, and its brown ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... also yt appeareth by dayly experience that the numbr of idle, vaggraunte, loyteringe sturdy roags, masterless men, lewde and yll disposed persons are exceedingly encreased and multiplied, committinge many grevious and outerageous disorders and offences, tendinge to the great . . . of Allmightie God, the contempt of Her Majesties ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... of ringing helm and shield, A dreadful rumor roared on every side, There lay a horse, another through the field Ran masterless, dismounted was his guide; Here one lay dead, there did another yield, Some sighed, some sobbed, some prayed, and some cried; Fierce was the fight, and longer still it lasted, Fiercer and fewer, still themselves ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... showed sometimes a harrow left to rust, with its iron seat half filled with stiffened snow, and sometimes an old dead buggy, it's wheels forever set, it seemed, in the solid ice of deep ruts. Chickens scratched the metallic earth with an air of protest, and a masterless ragged colt looked up in sudden horror at the mild tinkle of the passing bells, then blew fierce clouds of steam at the sleigh. The snow no longer fell, and far ahead, in a grayish cloud that lay upon the land, was ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... Gudrun (Gurnarkvia in forna), or the tale of Gudrun to Theodoric, an idyll like the story of Oddrun, goes quickly over the event of the killing of Sigurd, and the return of Grani, masterless. Unlike the Lament of Oddrun, this monologue of Gudrun introduces dramatic passages. The meeting of Gudrun and her brother is not merely told by Gudrun in indirect narration; the speeches of Hogni and Gudrun are reported directly, as they might have been ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... yearning realized, As the first babe to the first woman born; 120 No falcon ever felt delight of wings As when, an eyas, from the stolid cliff Loosing himself, he followed his high heart To swim on sunshine, masterless as wind; And I believe the brown earth takes delight In the new snowdrop looking back at her, To think that by some vernal alchemy It could transmute her darkness into pearl; What is the buxom peony after that, With its coarse constancy of hoyden blush? ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... death were preceding the living against the proud cuirassiers. Now the ranks met with a terrible crash. The supernaturally majestic scene was transformed in an instant into a horrible, formless chaos. Overthrown by the force of the shock, horses and riders rolled upon the earth. Masterless steeds dashed wildly in every direction, revolvers snapped, sword-blades clashed, the horses uttered short, harsh screams, the Frenchmen fought amid oaths and exclamations, the Germans, with clinched teeth, dealt blows around them, swords were buried in the bodies of enemies, without their ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... little-known Bhutan, were rumoured to have broken out into rebellion against the Maharajah because, loyal to his treaties with the Government of India, he had refused a Chinese army free passage through the country. All the masterless Bhuttia rogues on both sides of the border were sharpening their dahs and looking down greedily on the fertile ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... the same," answered Ramabai. "We can reach there before sundown. It would be wise to hasten, however, as this desert and those hills are infested with lawless nomadic bands of masterless men—brigands, you call them. They would cut the throat of a man for the ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... at her. She had, I thought, a remarkable countenance, instinct both with power and goodness. I took sudden courage. Answering her compassionate gaze with a smile, I said—"I will trust you. If I were a masterless and stray dog, I know that you would not turn me from your hearth to-night: as it is, I really have no fear. Do with me and for me as you like; but excuse me from much discourse—my breath is short—I feel a spasm when I speak." All ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... hast done for me. In every black tent down to the Akaba and to the ocean, and across to the Euphrates, and beyond to the sea of the Scythians, the renown of my Mira and her children will go; and they who sing of them will magnify me, and forget that I am in the wane of life; and all the spears now masterless will come to me, and my sword-hands multiply past counting. Thou dost not know what it is to have sway of the desert such as will now be mine. I tell thee it will bring tribute incalculable from commerce, and immunity from kings. Ay, by the sword of Solomon! doth my messenger ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace |
